The Power of the Sun
by Goldleaf83
Summary: Something is driving him crazy. Something he can't tell us about. Another "Conversations" story.
1. Chapter 1

_Another "Conversations" story, though from a new point of view. This story has a few references to earlier stories in the series, though it should still be comprehensible to readers unfamiliar with them. (But it gives away a few of the plot points of "Scars" and "Unspoken.") Special thanks to Hummingbird2, whose comments and questions got me thinking and led to this particular scene. _

_I have loved __Hogan's Heroes__ since the 1970s, but none of its characters are mine; they were created by Bernard Fein and Albert S. Ruddy. I acknowledge their ownership and that of Bing Crosby Productions and intend no copyright infringement. At no point will I or others profit monetarily on this story._

ooOoo

I'm watching Rob carefully. He's out in the back yard now, roaming restlessly around the sides of the garden out in the sun, rather than staying in the shade of the maple tree as anyone with any sense would do on a hot August day in the midst of a heat wave. I must admit, though, that it's something of a relief to have him out of the house for a bit. He's been unable to sit still since he arrived Saturday night, a day late for his promised weekend leave, though with the welcome news for his mother and me that he can stay till Tuesday morning to make up for missing almost all of Saturday. I've never seen him wound so tight. His mind isn't here at all; he knows something is up, some secret thing that he can't share with us.

I know not to ask about it.

Rob was open as a young boy, but as he grew older he could never resist spinning yarns to explain his multitude of pranks. Most of the time it was entertaining; a few times it was worrying when I had to try to figure out what he was hiding behind some outrageous tale that had a slim silver lining of plausibility. But to my relief he always had a strong sense of honor: if he'd done something really wrong, he'd always 'fess up to it when confronted, and a few times he even came to me and admitted something that I hadn't yet heard about. Not submissive—never that! But fundamentally honest. He had a conscience under those charming manners and all those outrageous stories and jokes of his. And he loathed bullies, wouldn't tolerate them for a minute, though he shifted between outright confrontation of them and slyly entrapping them through their own methods. I gradually learned I could trust him to have the right aims, though his methods were usually unorthodox and sometimes more than a bit questionable.

There were plenty of times he exasperated me, with that wild anarchic energy he had. When he decided to go to the Military Academy and join the Army I knew he'd either be quickly kicked out or it would be the making of him. Though I had trouble imagining Rob in uniform, I hoped that he'd finally find the discipline he needed for that deviously creative mind of his. Fortunately he did, and eventually I watched him climb the hierarchy of the military farther than I would have believed, especially in peace time when promotions were few and far between for officers.

When war broke out in Europe, his mother and I feared that it would eventually draw in the United States and Rob with it. We hadn't counted on him choosing to go over there before the U.S. was even involved, volunteering to help the British as best he could within the limits of official American neutrality. The "darkest hour" of the British during the Blitz became ours as well, as we had to learn to live with the fear and dread that grip the hearts of any serviceman's family, and nearly two years before other American families did. Rob didn't say much in his letters home about what he was doing—couldn't, of course—but I could tell it involved flying, and we knew that the skies were where the battle was at that point in the war.

And then Pearl Harbor came, and the fight in Europe became ours too—as perhaps it should have been earlier. I knew Rob believed that it should have. The U.S. Army was short on everything, including officers of higher rank and combat experience, and Rob was suddenly a lieutenant colonel and not long afterwards made a full bird colonel, far faster than I would have believed. (He could at least tell us about getting promoted, if not exactly what he'd done to get promoted for.)

A few months later we knew that American bombers were flying over Germany by daylight, and that Rob was flying them . . . and our earlier worries about him getting shot down in a battle over Britain paled in comparison to our worries about him getting shot down over Nazi Germany. With that rank, we knew he had to be leading (and probably devising) major raids. Every day that we heard no news we counted a good day, and the occasional days we got letters were great ones.

And then came the telegram.

"The Secretary of War desires me to express his deep regret that your son Colonel Robert E Hogan has been reported Missing in Action since Six July over Germany If further details or other information are received you will be promptly notified."

_Missing in Action_. It's a terrible phrase, so much unknown past and future packed inside it.

(But at least it was not "Killed in Action.")

Weeks passed with no more news, hope growing fainter each day. If the Germans had him, they'd inform the Red Cross. We'd hear, right?

Unless . . . he had evaded capture? His German was good. Maybe he could hide, could pass as a local, could use that ability of his to charm and tell tales to help him get to the coast, could somehow cross the Channel, get back to England . . . .

Or he could be dead. And we might never hear how.

(I couldn't imagine it, couldn't believe that brightly burning spirit of his could be snuffed out.)

More weeks of waiting, fading into months. Sometimes not knowing seemed the worst possible fate, until I thought about definitively hearing that he was dead.

Then, finally, another telegram from the Secretary of War.

"Report just received through the International Red Cross states that your son Colonel Robert E Hogan is a prisoner of war of the German government."

We sighed in relief, overjoyed he was alive. But . . .

A prisoner. Probably cells, at least for some time. Maybe restraints.

But the Germans were said to abide by the Geneva convention for captured airmen, plus Rob was a high-ranking officer. So maybe some courtesies, if he was lucky. If he didn't infuriate his captors.

(The chance of that seemed unlikely.)

I'm a lawyer; I've seen men who were prisoners. Captivity wears on them, hard. Some give up, become spiritless; others fight it.

I knew which group Rob would fit into. He had never reacted well to being cooped up, to having nothing to do, and I knew all too well that he always chafed under authority he couldn't respect. I remembered how much trouble we'd had with him in sixth grade, with an incompetent teacher he was learning nothing from, who didn't challenge him—except, apparently, to come up with prank after prank. I'd had to punish him; hated to do it, but you can't let boys treat teachers, even bad ones, with disrespect.

. . . The standing order for officers who are captured is to escape.

Escaping could get him free.

Or more likely get him shot. Or otherwise punished, and not by someone who loved him.

The first letter we got from him was such a relief. Proof he was alive. He said he wasn't hurt.

(But would he tell us if he were?)

He said he was fine, camp life was fine, not to worry about him.

(Uh huh. Right.)

But the letters kept coming. Not often enough, none very informative, but each one precious, a sign he was alive.

Each one pretending that he'd accepted his fate as a prisoner docilely.

(Rob was never docile a day in his life.)

The war dragged on. He'd been shot down so early in it. He was going to spend some of the best years of his life in a prison camp.

(Yet in ways I hoped he would spend them in the prison camp, that he'd get through the war, get through his thirties _alive_ there.)

And then, by chance, I was reading a small article, buried deep in an inner section of _The Boston Globe_. It was written by a correspondent who'd been observing in a plane in a raid over Germany, which had been shot down. He'd been rescued by an underground unit. The words are still burned into my brain: ". . . The request was no names please, but somewhere in Germany an American officer is operating a sabotage and rescue unit from, of all places, a German POW camp."

_Rob_.

Oh dear God.

It had to be him. Sure, there were a lot of good officers who were prisoners of the Nazis, but this just _had_ to be Rob. An underground operation right under the Nazis' noses? Thumbing his nose at the Third Reich while undermining it? The set-up had Rob's fingerprints all over it.

I was so proud of him. So scared for him. His chances of making it through the war, already slimmer than I liked, now terrified me. But he was making a difference, using that ingenious and wily mind of his to fight back. I couldn't expect him to do otherwise. And after all, I'd never bought his claim that he'd accepted a quiet life in a POW camp for the duration.

I clipped out the article and showed it to Ann. Her eyes filled with tears as she read it and looked up at me. "It's him, isn't it."

Not even a question.

I put the clipping in my desk, didn't mention it to anyone. As they say, "Loose lips sink ships."

Or secret underground operations.

(And how _dare_ that idiot newspaper reporter endanger my boy by writing this?! I thought the papers were properly censored!)

That's how I learned that knowledge in wartime is dearly bought. We hadn't slept well before seeing that article; we slept far worse afterwards, knowing what he was up to.

The next letter from him was such a tremendous relief.

(Except it had been mailed just after the article appeared. Would the Nazis see that paper? How long would that take if they did?)

So each occasional letter of non-news from him became doubly precious.

The Allies invaded Europe. The Eastern Front moved westward as the Western Front moved east and north. Armies fought and slowly, painfully, marched across France, Poland, Belgium, the Netherlands, finally into Germany itself.

No letters got through.

Stories of atrocities began leaking into the papers.

And then, fulfilling all our hopes, another telegram came.

Liberation. Rob was _alive_. He could send telegrams.

And soon letters. With some real news: he was promoted again. A brigadier general now.

Neighborhood, church, and family friends were surprised by the news. After all that time in a prison camp doing nothing?

(We knew why, but we never said.)

And finally, months later, a visit. A bit too skinny, especially for his mother's tastes. Changed in some indefinable ways. Even with a star on his collar, he was still a charming scamp, but underlying it I could see a kind of weariness, yet also a set of nerves I hadn't seen in him before.

Eventually I saw some of what his time as a prisoner had cost him. Accidentally, of course: I know that he'd never deliberately have let me see it. It was hard enough to get him to open up about less difficult experiences he'd had. Left to his own devices, he'd have told us only funny stories; he had a whole string of those that he kept trotting out to amuse us with.

I suppose it was difficult enough for him to live with some of his other, worse memories; he didn't want us to live with them too.

I tried not to push him on those, though at times I simply couldn't help myself when I could see the past haunted him.

We had him for nearly four precious weeks, before he had to go to Washington.

Now he's back for another visit, as promised. Since he arrived he's been nearly manic, fidgeting around every room he's in, chatting brightly with us, but as best Ann and I can tell it's to distract himself from something.

The only different moment was in church yesterday morning. He sat next to me, still but tight, uncharacteristically high strung. No one who didn't know him well would see anything off, not there in public.

But during the pastor's prayer, he was so tense, silently concentrating harder than I've seen before. He's not a praying man, not publicly. But this time, he meant it.

Something is driving him crazy. Something he can't tell us about.

I don't think it's the past this time. I think it's the present.

Something secret. Classified.

Something to do with the war. . . .

Japan?

_Invasion?_


	2. Chapter 2

Rob has finally come back inside, out of the hot brilliant sun and into the cooler shade of the kitchen, where there's a fan going. I've poured him a glass of lemonade, which he's accepted with polite thanks, though he hasn't sat down to drink it. I'd suggest we go sit in the living room, but Ann's in there to dust as she listens to her eleven o'clock radio show. I don't understand her attachment to this soap opera, but if it makes her happy, I'm happy for her.

I'm casting around for something to talk about, something to distract him from whatever is eating him, when Ann calls from the living room, "John, Rob—the radio just announced they're about to read a press release from President Truman."

Rob slams the lemonade down so hastily on the table that it slops over a bit and heads into the living room at not quite a run.

Is this it, I wonder to myself as I follow him? Whatever "it" is that he's been working himself into knots over?

I get in there just in time to hear the beginning.

"_Sixteen hours ago an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima and destroyed its usefulness to the enemy. That bomb had more power than 20,000 tons of TNT_."

The idea is staggering. A single bomb with that kind of power? Used against a city? That idea is terrifying. If we can do it to them, can they do it to us?

I turn to Rob, who is leaning on the table that holds our mahogany Zenith radio, his eyes glued to it as though somehow he can see into it, through it, right to the announcer himself. He's gone completely still now, unaware of me or his mother, concentrating totally on the announcement, though I've missed a couple of sentences. I refocus on what's being said.

"_It is an atomic bomb. It is a harnessing of the basic power of the universe. The force from which the sun draws its power has been loosed against those who brought war to the Far East_."

Rob's fingers whiten with the pressure he's applying as he grips the table.

"_Before 1939, it was the accepted belief of scientists that it was theoretically possible to release atomic energy. But no one knew any practical method of doing it. By 1942, however, we knew that the Germans were working feverishly to find a way to add atomic energy to the other engines of war with which they hoped to enslave the world. But they failed."_

Rob closes his eyes and clenches his jaw, and looking at him I know, I just _know_, that this is not academic information to him. He's brushed up against this somehow in the years he's been gone.

The announcement goes on: clearly they're reading it in its entirety, a rare choice that suggests the momentous nature of its contents. We continue to listen, as it briefly explains how the American and British governments developed this weapon, manufacturing it here in the U.S., and how "_what has been done is the greatest achievement of organized science in history. It was done under pressure and without failure_.

"_We are now prepared to obliterate more rapidly and completely every productive enterprise the Japanese have above ground in any city. We shall destroy their docks, their factories, and their communications. Let there be no mistake; we shall completely destroy Japan's power to make war. It was to spare the Japanese people from utter destruction that the ultimatum of July 26 was issued at Potsdam. Their leaders promptly rejected that ultimatum. If they do not now accept our terms they may expect a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth. Behind this air attack will follow sea and land forces in such number and power as they have not yet seen and with the fighting skill of which they are already well aware."_

I see a miniscule shudder run through my son as he hears this.

The announcer finishes up the statement with President Truman's assertion that atomic technology may someday take its place with coal and oil to produce energy but that for now it must be kept secret, and with his proposal that Congress establish a commission that will control how atomic power is used. His final promise is to "_make further recommendations to the Congress as to how atomic power can become a powerful and forceful influence towards the maintenance of world peace_."

The announcer promises more information as it becomes available. To my surprise, Rob shuts off the radio as it returns to regular programming before straightening up and putting his hands in his pockets. He keeps his eyes on the radio as the three of us stand there silently, trying to digest the meaning and implications of this announcement. Somehow, I'm reminded of Pearl Harbor Day, that terrible December afternoon not quite four years ago when Ann and I stood right here, equally transfixed, feeling the world change around us. Rob seems almost as flummoxed as the two of us, despite the obvious fact that he knew something about it ahead of time.

Ann breaks the silence, wringing her hands at her waist and asking directly, "Rob, what does this mean?"

"With any luck, the end of the war." He doesn't look at her as he speaks, and I wonder how much more he knows about this that he can't and won't speak of.

"Then you think the Japanese will surrender?"

"I hope they will," he answers heavily.

"So we won't have to invade," I deduce.

"I hope not," he replies. "That would be," he hesitates a moment, "the saving grace out of this . . . ."

He doesn't finish the sentence. I can't help wondering, _this what?_

Ann meets my eyes, obviously worried about Rob's reaction. A possible end to the war in the Pacific ought to mean celebration, but this new development, this new bomb, clearly weighs heavily on our son the brigadier general. Rob's eyes dart around the room, then he excuses himself, heading back through the house, though the kitchen, and out the back door into the yard.

Ann and I follow as far as the kitchen; she seems to have forgotten about the woes of her radio characters, caught up in the real life drama of the war that seems to have landed once again on our doorstep. She begins to bustle about, planning lunch. When in doubt or crisis, she always fixes food, as though that can somehow save the situation. It does seem to work, for her at least: the act of cooking seems to soothe her, knowing she is providing a meal for her loved ones. And maybe there's wisdom in it: food is nourishment, and focusing on what gives life in the midst of war and death is not the worst of strategies.

I watch Rob pace in the back yard, back out in the sizzling sunshine. His stride has a different cadence to it now than it did before the radio announcement: slower, more leaden. Rather than flying loosely, his arms now wrap tightly around his chest; his head is bowed. He's never had much of a military bearing—that I've seen at any rate, though of course we generally only see him when he's on leave. But the last two days I've missed his usual easy demeanor, that casual slouch that somehow proclaims the core self-assurance he's had since he was a boy. The replacement of that earlier tightly wound agitation with this dejection is no improvement, though.

My heart aches at the sight of him. I want, somehow, to lift his burden, or ease it at least. But I'm not sure how. I'm not sure if it's even possible.

Ann sends me down to the basement to fetch some canned vegetables for the lunch casserole she's planning, cautioning me, as ever, to be careful on the stairs. When I return, she's watching Rob out the back window.

"Go to him," she tells me.

"He'll probably tell me he can't talk about it," I say back.

"Then you'll find ways to talk around it," she replies with a little smile.

I suppose I will.

ooOoo

When I get out there, Rob glances up at me, reluctantly, then looks away again quickly. He doesn't want to talk about this, I can tell.

I wonder if this habit of bottling hard stuff up inside him comes from being an officer—and from what he's said the only officer, for a long time—in command of the men of his camp, or if it comes from keeping all his secrets from the Germans. I wonder what his relationships with the men under his command were really like, if he was close to any of them, could confide in them, or if he had to keep himself distant from them. Is he missing their camaraderie? He's told us lots of yarns about the men of his barracks, light and amusing tales, but I know we don't have the full picture. Not by a long shot.

The hot sun beats down harshly on me as I cross my arms over my chest too. I decide to start with something he can't deny.

"You knew about this ahead of time," I observe as neutrally as I can.

"Yeah," he admits with a sigh. "I had to stay to get briefed early Saturday afternoon. That's why I was late getting in."

"I'm surprised you came on up. I mean, this is something pretty big, after all." I'm hoping to let him know that we'd understand if his duties interfered.

I get a loose shrug back from him. "We'd planned this visit and I didn't want to disappoint you and Mom," he says, staring across the garden. "There was nothing to do about it down there anyway except wait for the news to come in. I figured I could do that here as well as I could there. There still isn't really anything I can do. The Pacific isn't my bailiwick, after all. I'm scheduled to go back to London in a few weeks."

Hmm, that seems to be part of it. Nothing he could do about it. I'd think that being a prisoner for three years would have taught him how to handle inaction—but then he wasn't all that inactive, was he.

"You said this should lead to Japan's surrender. So why are you so upset by this?"

He looks dead at me. "I've been in bombings with conventional bombs, Dad. From the air and on the ground. I saw what the Nazis' Blitz did to London and Liverpool and Coventry. But I also saw what our carpet bombing did to German cities. I've seen. . . ." He stops, swings away.

"What?" I ask him quietly. "Tell me." I'm not sure how this ties in with this new bomb yet, but I am sure he needs to get what's disturbing him off his chest.

He shakes his head.

"Tell me," I press him harder.

He pauses for a moment, debating with himself inwardly, I suppose, then gives in. "You just can't believe the amount of destruction." His voice is soft, haunted. "Photographs don't do it justice. Whole cities leveled. Blocks of buildings collapsed, burned and baked into rubble. And the people inside—" he chokes off whatever words were coming to his lips, censoring his thoughts and experiences from me, and tightens his arms around himself. But he does start up again.

"It's indescribable how awful it is. Especially when it's civilians. Women. Children. Old people. And there are _always_ civilians who suffer from it. We aim for military targets, but 'precision bombing' from the air is nowhere near what it claims to be. Off-target bombs hit nearby homes and schools and small businesses, ordinary people going about their everyday life, just trying to live. The British started deliberately practicing 'area bombing' back in '42, to 'dehouse' German people and destroy morale." His voice catches slightly. "They made civilians into military targets."

"The Nazis did that first," I remind him. "To Warsaw, and Rotterdam, and then all those English cities."

"Actually, the Nazis did it first to Guernica, in Spain in '37," Rob reminds me. "And Mussolini's Fascists did it in Ethiopia before them in '36, and the Japanese to the civilians of Shanghai in '32. The theory was the sustained bombing of civilians would force their governments to surrender. So yeah, it's been happening for years on their side and ours. And now we're doing it too."

He snorts, but there's no amusement in it. "In Japan over the past few months, we haven't even been pretending to use precision bombing; it's saturation bombing of the cities. Sure, there are military installations in them; however, there's also a city full of civilians around them. But we're actually trying to burn whole cities to the ground. Reports suggest we've been succeeding in Tokyo. The theory is that it'll break their morale too. But now, just one bomb to take out a whole city. Not just military targets, but women and kids and old people again."

"But we had to win, had to beat Germany," I say uneasily. "We still have to beat Japan. You've said that before yourself, just a couple weeks ago when I asked you about it. That it'll cost thousands, tens of thousands of American and Allied lives to invade Japan. If this atomic bomb works, all those guys will live. Your cousin George is out there, and Harold and Lois's sons Bert and Roger, and a dozen other young guys from our church, from our block." My voice is heating up, thinking about them, some of them hardly more than boys, some of them with wives and kids. I want all those boys to come home alive.

"You're a general in the United States Army Air Force, Rob," I snap. "You can't possibly choose enemy lives over our own boys!"

Rob looks down at his feet. "Yeah. And that's my problem."

Clear as mud. "Okay, son, can you explain that a little more clearly?"

He raises his head to give me a long, cool, assessing look. It's disconcerting to be on the receiving end of it, and I realize I'm getting another glimpse of what he must have been—no, must be—like as a commander. But what he says surprises me.

"I was a prisoner of war for two and a half years, Dad, under the protection of the Geneva Convention. Kommandant Klink followed the rules set down there."

I stir somewhat impatiently—it's not like he needs to remind me he was a prisoner; it was something I thought about every single day for all that time. I don't understand the sudden switch in topic, and I certainly don't get the way he sometimes defends his jailor. And I know damn well that not _all_ of his captors followed the Geneva Convention; I've seen the evidence on his body. The flaming sun scorching my neck isn't helping matters. I feel sweat popping out on my brow.

Rob ignores my visible irritation and continues, "There is no Geneva Convention to protect noncombatants—all those civilians in the cities we've been bombing. And this war, like no other war in history, has made civilians into targets. The Axis powers did it first, yes. But our side has been doing it too, first in Germany, now in Japan. Although I was a combatant, the Geneva Convention protected me once I was taken prisoner. But those civilians deserve its shelter even more than I did. Actually, a lot more than I did."

He speaks the last sentence almost in an undertone, stopping and looking away. I'm sure he's thinking about his classified underground operation, the sabotage that we both know he committed but that neither of us can mention, and that I have no real idea of the extent of. If his captors had discovered it, he wouldn't have been protected by the rules of war that the Geneva Convention had set.

For a moment I find myself wondering if all Rob's targets were legitimate military targets. Then I get a grip on myself. I know my son, right down to his bones. He would never have deliberately attacked civilian bystanders.

But I suppose that doesn't mean none died as a result of things he did.

He flew Flying Fortresses, after all, to bomb military targets. He told one story a few weeks ago about a mission to bomb a submarine base in Bremen. How many of his bombs hit their targets—and how many missed?

The fiery sunlight is getting to be too much for me. I cross into the shade of the maple, standing a bit further away, but Rob doesn't budge, staying out in the full burning glare of the fierce August mid-day sun.

"But we have to win the war," I point out, more now comfortable in my shaded spot. "The way to stop the killing, of them and us, is to get them to surrender, whatever that takes. And you can't forget what the atrocities Nazi and Japanese troops have committed—the concentration camps in Germany, the Bataan Death March in the Philippines, the Nanking Massacre in China, just for starters. You of all people have to know how brutal they've been with the countries they've occupied! The Japanese weren't worried about the Geneva Convention in the way they treated our men in their POW camps. And the Nazis sure didn't give a damn about the Jews in the death camps being civilians."

Rob nods grimly. "I do know. That's why we have to win this war." Again he pauses, weighing his words. "But I'm not sure right now if the means by which we're going to win isn't nearly as bad as the evil we're trying to defeat. The Japanese army's abuse of American POWs and the other atrocities they've committed in conquered countries isn't the fault of the women and kids of Hiroshima. But that's who we're making pay the price to try to get the Japanese military to surrender." He sighs.

It's an old question he's asking, one familiar to lawyers like me: do ends justify means? How many men in this war have told themselves that they do?

"It's an impossible dilemma," Rob continues, and I hear frustration and anger and sadness in his tone. "And now . . . just one bomb. Obviously, we're still going to have to see how well it really works, try to assess the damage it did. But if what we're being told is true, this new weapon makes it so much easier to kill so many more people. We kept the Nazis from developing it, thank God, but what happens now when someone else figures it out? If there's one thing I know, it's that scientific knowledge spreads. If we can invent it, so will someone else. What happens when our enemy has it, planning to use it against us?"

Well, I'd wondered that same thing when I heard the announcement.

"Atomic bombs will change the rules of war, the way wars get waged." I can see he's thinking aloud, going over issues he must have been chewing on the whole time he's been here, finally released to some degree by the public announcement to air out loud what has been eating at him the last few days. "I don't know how yet. And that worries me. Quite frankly, it scares me. Nobel thought the invention of dynamite would stop wars, because it was too terrible to use. Well, we know how that turned out," Rob chuckles bitterly.

Then his voice drops. "Armies fight wars with the weapons they have. I can't think of an example in military history where one side had a technological advantage and didn't use it. We've got this one, and now we've used it. But we might not need it to win—conventional forces might be enough—if we could just get the Soviets to declare war on Japan too."

I arch my eyebrows in surprise. That would be a game changer. Is it possible?

Heedless of my musings, Rob goes on. "But maybe we won't be able to. Maybe it'll be just us and our current allies. Maybe the saturation bombings, or now atomic bombings, are the only way to persuade the Japanese government to surrender. So I can't help wondering that, if it were my decision, I might choose as President Truman has, using that advantage and giving up the children of Japan to save George and Bert and Roger and all the other young men like them. That I might let noncombatants die to save soldiers. I don't know. And that disturbs me. A lot.

"Plus," he starts, then hesitates a long moment, and I can tell he's debating whether or not to tell me the next thing. I wait, patiently, hoping he'll continue. Finally he opts to go on. "I can't really say how or why . . . but Dad, I'm not without responsibility today. I'm not . . . clean of this thing." He tilts his head upwards, scanning the sky, and the merciless sunlight blazes on the sweat on his face.

That's as close as he's gotten to admitting his clandestine career aloud, and I'm certain he's skirting the line of official secrecy in saying so. I can't imagine how he could have been involved even tangentially, and I'm aware that I'll probably never know. But it does partly explain, at last, why this has unsettled him so deeply.

I don't know what to say to him. I'm his father, older and supposedly wiser from the extra years I've lived. But I've never been so aware of how far past me my son the general has gone as I am at this moment, how far beyond me it is to offer him comfort beyond my own love for him.

I move back close to him, standing in the hot rays of the sun. "War is an awful thing," I say quietly. "I suppose that innocents have paid as high a price as the fighters in a lot of wars, if not as many as in this one." Rob nods as I add, "And I guess all we can do now is hope that today will end it all, that it will stop this war and all the killing."

Rob is silent for a moment, then he murmurs, "Amen to that."

As we stand together in the searing sunlight, I bow my head and silently pray for a lasting peace.

ooOoo

_Author's Notes: _

_1) The italicized parts of Truman's press announcement are direct quotations. (You can see a scanned copy of the original document online at the Harry S. Truman Library website, if interested.) Because of time zone differences, people in the United States would have heard about it on August 6th, the morning of the same calendar date as the bombing itself, though many hours after it had occurred. Of course, on August 6th the Hogans do not know that a second atomic bomb will be dropped on Nagasaki on August 9th, nor that the Soviet Union will in fact declare war on Japan on August 8th. The combination of these events, plus the deteriorating military situation overall, will result in the Japanese announcement of surrender on August 15th, and the formal signing of the surrender on the U.S.S. _Missouri_ in Tokyo Harbor on September 2nd._

_2) Truman's decision to use the atomic bombs remains controversial. It may have saved an invasion that would have cost tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of lives on each side, civilian as well as military; that's certainly how most Americans saw it at the time. However, there's evidence the Japanese were considering surrender already in the summer of 1945. General Eisenhower and Admiral Leahy (Truman's Chief of Staff) both opposed using the atomic bomb, the former on pragmatic and the latter on ethical grounds. _

_However, in one sense the atomic bombings of the two Japanese cities did not signal a major change in American bombing policy, only in the technology to accomplish it. Like the Axis powers, the Allies had chosen to bomb civilian populations fairly indiscriminately in both Europe and Japan: the bombings that the U.S. claimed as "precision" were in fact not terribly accurate, and the British deliberately "area bombed" a number of civilian centers, such as Dresden, to try to break German morale. ("Area bombing" was the euphemism coined for bombing cities without regard for the safety of civilians, for the purpose of terrorizing them and diverting enemy resources from ground battles to air defense. "Carpet bombing" and "saturation bombing" were commonly used equivalent terms.) Later U.S. bombing raids on Japanese cities, modeled on the RAF "area bombing" strategy, killed Japanese civilians by the hundreds of thousands. The firebombing raid on Tokyo on March 9-10, 1945 is the single most deadly bombing raid in in history; it killed approximately 100,000 people, most of them civilians—more than were killed outright by the atomic bombs in either Hiroshima or Nagasaki, though the long-term effects of radiation poisoning may have made the Hiroshima casualties greater_

_Three out of every four people killed outright in Hiroshima were civilians: women, children, old men._

_In 1921, the Italian general Giulio Duhet first formulated the theory that sustained aerial bombing of civilians would demoralize national populations and force their governments to surrender. World War II proved him wrong as several examples suggest: the bombardment of the Blitz actually stiffened British resistance, and the Nazi regime was not deterred by the firebombings of German cities with their horrendous casualties. Nor did the firebombing of Tokyo persuade the Japanese government to surrender, though the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki did play an important part. Emperor Hirohito cited the entrance of the Soviet Union into war against Japan as the more important factor, however._

_3) The Fourth Geneva Convention was the one that established protections for civilians in and around a war zone; the three previous Conventions had not. It was adopted in August 1949, in part as a result of military actions against civilians by multiple belligerents during World War II._

_4) I've noticed Hogan's Heroes is very much a Cold War show. The heroes brush up against the issue of the atomic bomb in several episodes, most notably helping slow Nazi development of the bomb by stealing the heavy water in "Go Light on the Heavy Water" and, perhaps more significantly, helping two German atomic scientists defect to help the Allies in "The Dropouts." Additionally, Hogan acts to protect the Manhattan Project in "Two Nazis for the Price of One," to the point of being willing to sacrifice his own life for it, though he doesn't know what the top secret code name means. So on August 6, 1945, Hogan might very well feel in part responsible for Hiroshima._

_5) In "Two Nazis for the Price of One," Hogan mentions having bombed a secret submarine base in Bremen before he was shot down._

_6) Alfred Nobel commented on his dynamite factories in 1891: "Perhaps my factories will put an end to war sooner than your [peace] congresses: on the day that two army corps can mutually annihilate each other in a second, all civilized nations will surely recoil with horror and disband their troops." He was, sadly, very wrong about his invention. It could, however, be argued that the somewhat similar Mutually Assured Destruction military philosophy ultimately worked in preventing a nuclear war between the U.S. and Soviet superpowers during the Cold War. Whether it will continue to work in our post-Cold War world is a question I have no answer to._


End file.
